"Hyperbolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time has not left us the power of confirming or refuting; but observation daily shows that much stress is not to be laid on hyperbolical accusations and pointed sentences, which even he that utters them desires to be applauded rather than credited. Addison can hardly be supposed to have meant all that he said. Few characters can bear the microscopic scrutiny of wit quickened ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... has been the heartfelt but rather naive way in which some of the provincials have expressed their gratitude. "I've paid half-a-crown for worse," said an old man of Ross to me, shaking me warmly by the hand and believing he was uttering a most delicate and hyperbolical compliment. (Now, during my remarks, I had noticed this man taking copious pinches of snuff to enable him, as I suspected, to sit out the meeting.) Another rustic, this time an Aberdonian, was impressed by the number of authors mentioned and the copious citations from their works. "Heavens!" ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... of 1484, it is difficult exactly to ascertain: that some thousands perished is certain, on the testimony of the judges themselves. The often-quoted words of Florimond, author of a work 'On Antichrist,' as given by Del Rio the Jesuit ('De Magia'), are not hyperbolical. 'All those,' says he, 'who have afforded us some signs of the approach of antichrist agree that the increase of sorcery and witchcraft is to distinguish the melancholy period of his advent; and was ever age so afflicted with them as ours? The seats destined ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... was somewhat hyperbolical," he answered, with a wink. "You can't expect a man with a broken neck, and a gash as big as my thumb at the back of it, to come round ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... will pray for my success, and that I may be able to stand the test. I have endeavored to give veracity in this matter, with no exaggeration. Neither have I spoken in hyperbolical terms, to make the wrong impression. Trusting that this is the question that you asked me, properly answered, I am hopeful that your stay with us this year has been crowned with success, and that you may return next year with ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various
... Scotch preacher, Dr. Thomas Chalmers. The mere title of the chapter is enough for our purpose. It related to his early youth, and ran thus, in his own words:—"A year of mental elysium". It is while living at a white-heat that all the thoughts and conceptions take a lofty, hyperbolical character; and the outpouring of these at the time, or afterwards, is the imagination of the orator or ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... After leaving the hyperbolical Governor, we went to see Sheikh Mohammed Boro, Sakontaroua of Aghadez, who has arrived here en route from Mekka. He was recommended to us by Hassan Pasha of Tripoli; but Mr. Gagliuffi does not think much ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... RAD—which is thus paraphrased for foreigners: "Deign graciously to pardon all that is unworthy of you, it is all my humble riches which I place at your feet." This formula [Footnote: All the Polish formulas of courtesy retain the strong impress of the hyperbolical expressions of the Eastern languages. The titles of "very powerful and very enlightened seigniors" are still obligatory. The Poles, in conversation, constantly name each other Benefactor (DOBRODZIJ). The common salutation between men, and of men to women, is PADAM DO NOG: "I fall at your ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... deems himself an honest man when he deceives others." Yet not every lie is a cause of deception, since no one is deceived by a jocose lie; seeing that lies of this kind are told, not with the intention of being believed, but merely for the sake of giving pleasure. Hence again we find hyperbolical expressions in Holy Writ. Therefore not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Indians frequently wear a round hat, a shawl, and short clothes, resembling the short gown and petticoat worn by the French and Dutch women. The Indian language is bold and figurative, abounding in hyperbolical expressions, and is said to be susceptible of much elegance. To give the reader some notion of the manner in which these people conduct their conferences with each other, and with Europeans, I shall subjoin an extract of a conference, or talk, held ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... shape, (as you will see by raising your eyes again to the Venus,) and after running two or three inches decidedly inward in a straight line, where it should turn outward with a gentle curve, its outlines break into a sharp angle, and it expands, with a sudden hyperbolical curve, into a monstrous and nameless figure that is not only unlike Nature, but has no relations whatever with Nature. The eye needs no cultivation, the brain no instruction, to perceive that such an outline cannot be produced by drapery upon a woman's form. It is clear, at a glance, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... softness of your august countenance dissipates at the same time, and changes into dew, the small vapours which cover its majesty." One of these herd of dedicators, after the death of Richelieu, suppressed in a second edition his hyperbolical panegyric, and as a punishment to himself, dedicated the work ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... My praise was hysterical and hyperbolical. I could have wept whilst I uttered it. For though I had given up all hope, and though I was glad to find that in art he was worthy as in manhood he was worthy, yet it was still hard to endorse a rival's triumph and to cut out all ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... The several trips he had made across the continent, and the several able and interesting reports he had published over his name attracted great public attention. He was hardly ever mentioned except in a high-flown hyperbolical phrase. Benton was one of the most influential men of his day, and it soon became well understood that the surest way of reaching the father-in-law's favor was by furthering the son-in-law's prospects; everybody that wished to court ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... for a certain kind of realism, for the language and mode of thinking of the lower classes, as a reaction from Petrarchesque conventionality. As the Magnificent Lorenzo had had the fancy to string together in more artistic shape the quaint and graceful love poems, hyperbolical, realistic, tender, and abusive, of the Tuscan peasantry; so also Messer Luigi Pulci appears to have been smitten with the notion of trying his hand at a chivalric poem like those to which he and his friends had listened among the butchers and pork-shops, the fishmongers and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Messiah to be descended from it. How strange would, according to this explanation, be the words, "of the days of eternity," which, as a climax, are added to, "of days of old!" What reason could there have existed for the prophet to exalt, by a hyperbolical expression, a limited time to eternity? As regards His human origin, the Messiah had not the slightest advantage over other mortals, as far as the age of the family was concerned. What, then, was the use of such a hyperbole in a matter which, in this connection, was of no consequence, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... cause we are to attribute this hyperbolical tone, we hold it certain he could not have adopted it, if he had been a little man. But his imposing figure and dignified manner enable him to hazard sentiments or assertions that would be fatal to others. His controversial daring is backed ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... the subject, with emphatical expressions in things of great concernment, with catachrestical in matters of meaner moment; attended on each side respectively with an epiplectic and exegetic modification, with hyperbolical, either epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated, they qualifying metaphors, and accompanied with apostrophes; and, lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, aenigmatic, or paroemial"? Would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the third; and coming up to Glanville, she addressed him, to my great astonishment, in terms of the most hyperbolical panegyric. ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... effect disclaimed the doctrine, inasmuch as they confess it cannot be extended to the words of the sacred writers, or the particular import—that therefore the doctrine does not mean all that the usual wording of it expresses, though what it does mean, and why they continue to sanction this hyperbolical wording, I have sought to learn from them in vain. But let a thousand orators blazon it at public meetings, and let as many pulpits echo it, surely it behoves you to inquire whether you cannot be a Christian on your own faith; and it cannot but be beneath ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... thought proper to see Kate approaching, he turned with an exclamation of hyperbolical admiration. He knew perfectly the type of woman with whom he had to deal. "Ah, it is den you, fair maid? You be fair widout dem, but much fairer wid de ear-rings, I you assure. Ah, if you had but a comely ouche ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... being more dilated, and the pores expos'd (as evidently appears in their horizontal sections) by the constant excentricity of the hyperbolical circles of all trees, (save just under AEquator, where the circles concentre, as we find in those hard woods which grow there) ours, being now on the sudden, and at such a season converted to the north, does starve and destroy more trees (how careful soever men have been in ordering the roots, and ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... recollects that St. Peter's, with all its appurtenances, palace, library, musaeum, every thing that we include in the word Vatican, is said by the Romans to occupy an equal quantity of space, to that covered by the city of Turin: the assertion need not any longer be thought hyperbolical. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... god, and a very mighty one; he is even the creator and father of the gods;[3] the king of gods and men;[4] all creatures are in his hand. It is surely extraordinary that the Aryas could apply such hyperbolical laudations to the liquor which they had made to trickle into the vat, and which they knew to be the juice of a plant they had cut down on the mountains and pounded in a mortar; and that intoxication should be confounded with inspiration. Yet of such aberrations ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... Motion, what kind of Line it is, they describe by that Motion of their own? whether circular, or streight, or curve, or partly streight and partly curve? And if curve, whether regular or irregular? if regular, whether Elliptick, or Parabolar, or Hyperbolical? He answers, That this Motion is Conical; and judgeth, that by the Conick path all the Phaenomena of Comets can, without any inconveniency, be ready solved; even of that, which (by History) in fifty daies, passed through more then the 12 Signs in the Zodiack: And of that, which in two ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... a fighting, enthusiastic, hyperbolic speech, glowing, as did the young face of the speaker, with the divine fire of youth. It ended triumphantly. He sat down to an ovation. Smiles and handshakes and words of praise surrounded him on the platform. Miss Winwood pressed his hand and said, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke |
